Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 17:56:45 -0800
Subject: Re: On nietzsche section 6 pg. xxvii


On Thursday, 01 Jan 1998, Ariosto gifted:
> 
> In _On nietzsche_ Pg. xxvii (section 6) Bataille writes "the fragmentary
> state of humanity is basically the same as the choice of an object."
> Fragmentation is always an investment of energy in an object through a
> decisive act or intention. This is what would be to act as in to address
> oneself with the purpose of achieving the goal of communication, of a useful
> exchange of something. In this way we suppress the integrity, or wholeness of
> our being, we sacrifice it for the interest of the party, nation, church, or
> any relation in general.. In this way as well, we produce a common, cultural
> product that binds people together and that operating as a marker of time
> spent together constitutes a memory. But what happens when we are seduced by
> an eternal return when it operates as a selective "principle" or filter of
> information? Or to be more precise, what changes occur to the direction of
> the will to expression, thinking, speech, etc.? Are we not bound by a certain
> blockage of expression that sometimes we call silence and constitutes a pure
> desire, or intentionality without object, end, or goal? Is not the
> catastrophic failure of our imagination revolving about a sublime image
> withdrawing itself and blurring representation the very subject "matter" (in
> the sense of force or event as in that which does not lend itself to being
> formed -- that which then precedes the matter/form distinction) of our
> imaginative ideas? What is the expression of an impossible speech but a
> dissonance whose noise not only encrypts any clear and distinct message but
> effectively frustrates any deciphering commentary or interpretation? Are we
> not positively illegible and good at keeping secrets? Have we not been
> seduced by nuances applied like camouflage to appearances, masks, even to the
> screen, after all, an eraser leaves it dirty marks? What are these marks,
> this catastrophe of narrative words that at one time I presumed to have a
> stable and defining meaning? What is this but a blurring of vision and a
> blind wandering with streams of chance as an aging companion flowing towards
> the horizon of a sea pregnant with ideas rendering the quest-(ions) through a
> shattered mirror tinted with azure in the image of a shaken bag jam packed
> with letters thrown for no reason but to start writing like Daniel happy with
> what comes to mind in this new year?
>  The blockage of expression is a damm by which streams of chance are
> recollected in order to magnetize a medium, to activate passages of
> communication that induce thinking, that re-direct  "speech" towards a
> becoming sovereing, or absolute, while disintricating itself from the
> tendency to become identified relative to another term, or mode. But how is
> this practice to be understood affirmatively and without opposition as
> Bataille suggests?
> 
> and he writes:
> "I can't choose to become an entire human being by simply fighting for
> freedom, even if the struggle for freedom is an appropriate activity for me
> -- becasue within me I can't confuse the state of entirety with my struggle.
> It's the positive practice of freedom, not the negative struggle against a
> particular oppression, that has lifted me above a mutilated existence. Each
> of us learns with bitterness that to struggle for freedom is first of all to
> alienate ourselves." (pg. xxvii)
> 
> may the worst calamaties invigorate your life in this new year,
> 
> Ariosto

"New vehicles in which we move more slowly than we walk: salvation"
(Elias Canetti, _Notes from Hampstead: The Writer's Notes: 1954-1971).